Area Woman Has 'Grossly Optimistic' Retirement Plan
by fascinationex
Summary: Maria arrives in the elemental nations just in time to be very sure she doesn't want to live there. [A highly OC centric fic in the "modern character in the elemental nations" genre. No romance. Rating is for adult themes, language, violence.]
1. Chapter 1

**Please note** : content includes references to suicide, adult themes, alcohol, various unhealthy coping mechanisms, etc. It does not feature main character romance. It is OC centric. I think that covers it.

* * *

I woke up from a nightmare about dying.

In the nightmare, I'd died in a stark, bleach-scented hospital room, after being told that nobody would approve a transplant for a patient with my history so I'd have to live - or die, as it happened - with my mistakes. Apparently there were levels of toxins that not even well-stocked, well-funded, fully-staffed modern hospitals could fix before your liver gave it up.

My next of kin was on the other side of the planet, visiting a friend in Sacramento, and there wasn't anybody else. So I'd been alone, and I'd lain there marinating in the crushing knowledge that death was coming for me. My own snide voice had come echoing in my head: _what did you expect? Isn't this what you wanted?_

 _I don't know_ , I thought helplessly.

But my blood would not clot anymore and my skin had changed colour and it was increasingly obvious that it was too late by then - and the rest, then, was a wash of pain and confusion, remembered only hazily. The medical staff were unsympathetic. So I died alone.

And then I woke up, sweating and shaking with my heart thundering wildly in my chest. I sat up, pulled my knees up and buried my face in the blanket over them. Wow. Okay. What a _fucked up_ dream.

My face hurt. My eyes hurt. My whole body hurt. Tension, probably.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Another. And again. My heart rate dropped much faster than I expected. After a few minutes of concentrated breathing - out, out, out, slow and steady, _concentrate_ , Maria - I still felt peculiar and wrong, but not like I was about to succumb to blind panic.

Clearly, I was not dying. (Every time I had ever thought 'clearly, I am not dying' to myself, a part of me whispered: _are you sure_? But second-guessing would drive me mad. I was reasonably sure, and I made the conscious choice to accept that as good enough.)

I didn't feel any of the pain or weird hazy confusion and anxiety of the dream. From what I knew, my only sister was still over in the States, although I hadn't spoken to her in several months.

Everything else about the dream was bullshit.

I leaned back, away from the hump of my legs beneath their blanket, and looked blearily around.

I could see... everything.

That was weird, I thought. Had I fallen asleep with my glasses on? I reached up to pull them off but where I expected metal frames I felt only thick, soft hair. I smooshed my hand over my eye. Nope. No lens.

The room was neither blurry nor familiar. And my eye sight was -

If I blinked toward the closet I could see every crack in the wood. I would...

I got up, stumbled - once, twice, _fuck_ , was I drunk? I couldn't remember any drinking, but that didn't mean much. Everything was the wrong distance away and despite how crystal clear my vision seemed, my limbs wouldn't coordinate with my brain.

I wrenched open the window and braced myself on its sill, weaving giddly back and forth on my unreliable legs. Fuck, I could see _everything_. I could see the leaves on the trees, whose long shadows I should not have even been able to pick out in the dark. I could discern the individual feathers on birds asleep in their branches and see the texture of fur on a ragged, dark cat slinking along a fence.

The cat's tail twitched. I saw the coil of his muscles and the shift in his joints and I knew where he'd land - clearly, so clearly, like I had already seen it - before he even made the jump.

I shut my eyes, dizzy. I swallowed. I opened my eyes and shut the window and turned back around, leaning against the wall. The room, in all its absurd detail, was simple but practical. Wooden furniture, mats underfoot, I was -

I was not me, I thought, looking at a pair of trousers laid out. I'd never fit into them. They were tiny. I flexed my fingers and looked, properly, at my hands.

No. Not mine.

I was not me. So I'd dreamed of dying, and then I'd woken up in a strange house with a new body and superpowers. And...

Well. It was the middle of the night. Maybe I was...

I went back to the bed, climbed in and pulled up the blankets. Maybe I would wake up from this, too.

So...

So... I, you know...

...I rolled over and went back to sleep.

Fuck dreams, anyway.

* * *

I woke up hungover. Unpleasant but not weird. The headache and hot warning queasiness in my belly could pretty much have been anything, but my mouth tasted like the smell of the dead rat I'd once found beneath my fridge, and when I rolled over, everything went for a subtle but horrifying wobble that I felt right behind my eyes.

I rolled away from the light source anyway, squeezed my eyes shut, and held very still. Getting drunk all alone was one thing; getting so drunk all alone that I vomited on myself was _completely different_ and so much worse.

After a few long moments my stomach settled, leaving behind only the sense that the world was twirling crazily around me. I cracked my eyes open again, still not quite ready to trust the feeling.

The sheets were white. That was weird. Most of mine were printed, owing to my regrettable but absolutely unchallenged habit of drinking coffee in bed. Actually, it didn't smell quite right here, either. It smelled pleasantly like recent laundry, which was in my house what you'd call _not fucking likely_. But I also did not recognise the detergent... or... any of the ambient sounds, actually, now that I was paying attention.

I exhaled long and hard. If I was clever, I'd have left myself some water within easy pawing distance. Or, given that I wasn't terribly predisposed to cleverness: if I'd dumped my bag on my bed after returning from work, I might have slept with it and there may, reasonably, be a bottle of water in there, which -

It was all horribly moot, since any of the above would require me to move. I made a sad animal noise in between my teeth, because I lived alone and keeping quiet didn't matter in the slightest. I knew I could whine and moan to my heart's content and nobody would come to either help or investigate.

I clenched my jaw and squirmed into a sitting position, against which half of my anatomy seemed to revolt. Once upright, I stilled. The nausea passed after a few seconds of tense, perfect stilless. The mounting anxiety about my circumstances absolutely did not.

There was plain wooden furniture, a low roof and one large window. The whole room was sparse, clean and completely unfamiliar.

I didn't know where the fuck I was.

And far from sleeping with my handbag, it was nowhere to be seen.

Okay. I would... I wouldn't have thought I was _that_ drunk, but I was pretty seedy feeling this morning and I had no idea where I was, so, like - I guessed circumstances like that didn't lie, did they?

I closed my eyes against another roll of nausea. My head felt disgusting. Okay. I needed an action plan. I'd feel better once I'd figured out where to go from here.

Step one: water. Step two: figure out where I was. Step three: find my stuff (please let my wallet and keys be somewhere nearby. Please). Step four: go home!

(Step five: go back to bed.)

This plan seemed reasonable and nearly foolproof until I staggered to my feet unsteadily and realised three important things:

One: my body was _not tall enough._ Because it was _some other body_.

Two: I recognised the view out the window, with a flash of memory that floated up from the murk of last night with photographic clarity.

Three: I _did_ remember something, which I had previously written off as a series of bizarre dreams, but which in light of point one -

Well.

This was the same room I'd woken to during the previous night and, far from being some weird dream, I was actually experiencing that strange body-hopping horror, and -

Oh. That meant...

Ah.

I had a few dithering and unpleasant moments of trying to assess the likely reality of that hospital room.

It was a linear, clear memory, right until the end where it became choppy and full of strange blanks. It was hard to feel really firm about reality right at that moment, but I thought that... the hospital, and the - the overdose - that had probably been real, too.

I blinked. Slowly.

Alright. Well. That was... a thing.

That was happening.

I shoved open the cupboards until I found one with a mirror inside. It was a short, flat one, designed to show only the face, and it was enough: I was short, young - _very young_ \- with a thin face, dark hair, dark eyes, and a mouth that looked angry.

"Fuck," I said. The voice wasn't right.

I closed the door and turned away, unsteady on my strange new legs.

I wondered if I should leave the room. God knew what was waiting outside it. However, despite all of this, step one still had not logically changed. I was hung over and I needed water.

I went to find the water.

The house I was inhabiting was small, neat and drab, much like the room I'd woken in. There was an oddly comprehensive collection of historical weaponry around, the kind that made me wonder if the people who lived here were re-enactors, or maybe LARPers or something. But it became rapidly apparent to me that even if someone else _had_ lived here at some point, it was a one person dwelling now.

There was another bedroom, but it was so dusty and untouched that it couldn't have seen proper use for - oh, the better part of a year, surely. And there was one cup, one bowl, one toothbrush. One pair of sandals by the door. No, this was not a place for a whole family, or even roommates.

I leaned heavily on the side of the kitchen sink. Then I shoved my face under the faucet and drank in great ugly gulps. I paused and let the cold spray fall past my face and into the drain when I stopped to breathe. Then I went right back to gulping it down.

It didn't help.

I was beginning to wonder if my nausea was actually a problem of being, like, physically maladapted to the body I was inhabiting. Changes like growing were usually gradual, but now I was using a body that was wiry and spindly and shorter by nearly a foot. Its feet and joints were not stiff or badly formed or worn, its eyes worked better, and it had feeling in all of its fingers. I had no proof, but I suspected I may not have been drunk at all last night - any sickness was instead something much more profound than a hangover.

I continued guzzling at the water anyway. Whatever was wrong, being hydrated could not possibly make it worse.

 _Unless the tap water isn't potable here!_ I thought. I decided this was a thought I was going to ignore.

I leaned against the sink for a while - minutes, at least, although I could not have said how many - breathing hard. I wiped water off my face with my skinny, prepubescent wrist.

Okay. Water. What next?

Then I went through the house haphazardly, looking at things as I thought of them. There were broad spoons, chopsticks and cooks' knives in the drawers, and a rice cooker in the cupboard. Whoever lived here bought rice in ten kilogram bags.

There was mail, unopened, addressed to 'Mariko' and mail, opened, addressed to 'Akiko'. On the fridge, a letter from the Central Clan Tithing Fund in partnership with the Konoha Orphans' Association and Regulatory Body.

I licked my teeth. That explained the mixed messages I'd gotten about who lived here.

Or did it? I squinted at the word 'Konoha'.

...LARPers, then, and the letter was, like. fake?

Or else maybe a place with coincidentally the same name as a fictional village? I couldn't tell.

I moved into the area with the low table and rattled around in the drawers until I found what I was looking for - albums. I tossed them onto the table and sprawled next to it, glad to stop tottering around on my stupid traitor legs.

The photographs - helpfully labelled and dated by some very organised person with habits not unlike my grandparents - in conjunction with the mail indicated that I was probably the one called 'Akiko'. The dates didn't make a lot of sense to me, but I guessed I was maybe, like, ten or so - and that for some reason that was old enough to leave a kid on thir own here.

I wasn't complaining because living with a caretaker would have made this morning so, so much worse, but - ten? Really?

"Akiko," someone was yelling, suddenly, and it took me a second to remember that that was meant to be me, after which I flinched and accidentally knocked over a bunch of the photos I'd pulled out, scattering them across the wooden floor.

"Uh," I called back, panicking, and then I wondered if I should even have called out at all. Maybe I could have pretended not to be here.

I heard my visitor let himself in and kick his shoes off in he doorway.

He had short fluffy air and an easy smile, which he did not hesitate to turn on me. "Are you going to school?" he asked - not accusingly, but neutrally, as though it was just a question.

It made sense that someone this age would be expected to be in school, and I guessed it was sort of a relief - they weren't actually just turning ten year olds out to run around unsupervised entirely. Nice to know... for someone else.

"Hmm," said the boy, who could not himself have been much more than thirteen. "Photos, huh?" he seemed to take my confused and frozen silence as assent because he tugged the one I was looking at out from beneath my limp fingers.

"Your mum sure looked pretty back then, huh?" he mused.

It was one of the 'Mariko' pictures, so that was, you know, useful information. Sort of.

"Or were you just admiring yourself?" he went on slyly, flicking a glance at me from under his eyelashes, which were very long. "You were so cute back then!" A pause. "I don't know what happened."

I snorted softly despite myself. I still had no idea where I was or, actually, who I was, but at least the company was well-equipped to entertain himself.

Still, maybe this whole waking-up-somewhere thing was actually normal - or, if not normal, at least heard of. And this guy seemed...

Well, okay, he was thirteen, maybe fourteen, at a stretch, but he'd at least know who to talk to. Probably. Maybe.

"Uh," I said haltingly, "so this is kind of weird, but I'm not actually 'Akiko'? I just, er, I think I just woke up like this. I mean, I had," I paused. "I'm not explaining this right. I had a totally different life," I said more carefully, "and then I woke up here and this," I pointed at my chest, "isn't me at all. Is this, like, a thing that happens here?" _Or,_ I thought wildly, _do I seem absolutely nuts?_

The boy turned to look at me. His expression was devoid of his sly teasing now, dark eyes narrowed, lips a flat line.

"Not typically," he said slowly.

And then - _holy fuck, and then_ \- his eyes went from their placid coal black to a burning, apocalyptic red. I twitched back from him, but he had my arm in his grip before I even thought to get away.

"Easy," he said, still in that slow and careful voice. "It's fine. It's fine, I'm just looking-"

His pupils split and whirled. Did he have the fucking sharingan? What kind of LARPers were these?

My heart raced inside the cage of my ribs. I could hear myself breathing again, feel the nausea that had been receding swim to the surface, swamping me.

"You _look_ like Akiko," he said, "and there's no weird chakra in your head or anything."

"Um," I said, "okay?"

His eyes did not dim. He did not let go of my arm. "But you're not," he said, looking me up and down in a way which might have seemed conspicuous and unsettling from a man on the street, but which here seemed absolutely terrifying with his eyes glowing that unholy red. "Your body language isn't right, and neither is your syntax."

"I... am sure that's true," I said. My voice came out all shaky because I was a coward. "Uh, I don't, you know, I don't actually want to be Akiko, either, you know? No offence, but I'm sure you want _your_ Akiko, proper Akiko, back, and -"

"Yes," he said, "I'm not saying you're wrong. There are... several possibilities." The way he said it made me feel as though none of these were good possibilities. His expression just made it feel even more ominous. "There's a clan who specialise in," he paused, and then said, "in stuff like this."

"Stuff like this," I repeated, tugging gently on my arm. He did not give it up. Well. Alright then.

"Yes," he said, offering no further elaboration on that point. Someone, somewhere, specialised in waking up in other people's bodies. Who was I to argue? His eyes were still spinning. "One of them is someone to whom I report. We'll ask him."

I nodded emphatically. "Great! Just to be, like, totally clear here, I have no interest in being part of some Asenath Waite body snatching deal okay?"

He gave me a long and unreadable look. "I believe you believe that," he said after a second. Then, "Ne, Akiko. Look at me."

"Huh?" I glanced up to his eyes, past his curved lips. This was a split second before I remembered that in Narutoland there was never a good reason to look directly at anyone's sharingan if you could possibly help it.

I blinked once, slowly, and the ceiling before me was painted white and covered with black squiggles and I was slumped over on a medical bed of some kind - sterile-smelling, padded, with a weird paper sheet tossed over it to be discarded after a new patient.

"Um," I said, dazzled by how disoriented I felt.

Was this _another_ dream?

I didn't feel as hungover now, but what did that even mean anymore? The only thing I was certain of was that I would want a goddamn drink after whatever _today_ was.

I sat up slowly.

"-ometimes," someone was saying, through the cracked door - a man's voice, confident, assured, but tired, "people react to trauma in unpredictable ways. In this case, Akiko is grieving in an... unorthodox, but not unprecedented, way."

"She seemed like a whole new person," said another person, and this seemed vaguely but nebulously familiar. I squinted at nothing. Who was that?

"In a way she is. She has disassociated herself profoundly from the person who experienced those losses - she may not even be able to identify 'herself' as Akiko."

A pause. "But she's not a plant?"

"Definitely not. She's deeply confused and I am not completely convinced she's competent to live on her own -"

Were they talking about me? _Hey_!

"- but she's not dangerous to anyone else. I wouldn't recommend keeping her under observation in T&I, either."

"You're that sure?"

"Shisui-kun," the voice said gently but, yes, still tiredly, and with an edge of mounting impatience, "you brought your cousin here because you knew we would be able to confirm whether or not she was dangerous, yes?"

A long pause. Finally, "Yes."

"And do you have faith in my work?"

A shorter pause. "...Yes."

"I'm so glad." Definitely impatient now.

Another silence. "So will she... remember?"

"She may," hedged the older, wearier voice. "She'll certainly have some semantic and procedural memory, but whether she remembers her personal experiences and history will be hit and miss."

"Can the hospital...?"

The voice laughed. "She's healthy, Shisui, she just thinks she's someone else. You can't give someone medicine specific enough for that, and I wouldn't recommend it even if you could - if she remembers, she will do so naturally, with time. You can take her home. Are you pretending to be asleep, Akiko?"

After several seconds of silence a blond man stuck his head into the room. His eyes were the blue of a summer sky, which I noticed immediately because he didn't seem to actually have pupils, and that's the kind of defect that gets a person's attention. How did he see? What hole did the light go in? Was he blind?

"Akiko?" he prompted, pushing the door open wide and coming in.

Hey, I was Akiko. Right! And I couldn't remember the question. "...No?" His mouth moved on its own, although I couldn't read his expression. He didn't look particularly unfriendly, so that was good. "So... Am I really Akiko?" I asked.

"Yes, you're really Akiko."

That was weird, because I remembered being an awful lot older. And also a hospital room. And I had no idea how this weird guy with no pupils had assessed my identity thoroughly enough to be this sure when a) I was not very sure at all, and b) I didn't remember any of the intervening period.

The other person from outside the room slunk in too. It was the boy from earlier, early teens, messy hair, dark e-

Dark eyes. They'd been red, hadn't they? They'd been _sharingan._

"Shisui, right?" I said slowly. "Uchiha Shisui?"

He blinked. Then smiled. I was uncertain and unhappy, but it was a smile. "Yes."

I looked over to the blond - really looked at him. His hair was thrown back in a jaunty, high ponytail, which trailed over a long charcoal-coloured coat, and he had - yeah. He had a Konoha forehead protector stuck to his arm (where, please note, it was by no means protecting his forehead).

"Um... Yamanaka?" I suggested weakly. As weird and embarrassing as it'd be to get this wrong, I'd have kind of liked for everyone to drop everything and go 'HAHA YOU'RE ON TELEVISION,' and reveal a hidden camera somewhere. I wasn't really the sort of person you pranked like that, though - everyone with the patience to spend time with me was painfully aware that I didn't respond well to pranks, shocks, or indeed even mild or pleasant surprises.

"Which one?" asked the man, and I blinked.

 _Which one?_ Was I meant to know him? "I'm sorry, I have no idea?"

He gave a smug smile. "Yes, that's what I expected. You know which clan is which, but you haven't the faintest clue if you've met us, have you?"

"What," I repeated.

This was, apparently, the cue for him to begin talking. He'd conjectured a lot while I'd been - well, during the blank spot in my recent memory - and despite how tired he looked he was evidently pleased to have a captive audience to whom he could expound.

Somewhere some kind of machinery was humming, but other than that and the sound of Yamanaka's voice, I could hear nothing louder than my own breathing. Shisui was a silent, blank-faced ghost beside him.

I rubbed my face. My glasses did not get in the way because I did not, apparently, wear glasses. "I don't know who Akiko is," I said flatly, interrupting one of his points, "and I don't really want to be her."

"I know," said Yamanaka, with an infuriating smile, "If you'd wanted to be her, this wouldn't have happened. But you are, all the same."


	2. Chapter 2

I was not required to suffer the smug certainty of the Yamanaka man for very long, but going 'home' was a mixed blessing. I was mentally present for the journey this time, and Akiko's body was not any more familiar than it had been earlier this morning.

I was fine for about six steps and then some obscure muscle memory would assert itself and nauseating, whirling ataxia would overwhelm me. I couldn't order any of my limbs. I stopped and flung my arm out for balance or I stumbled, and either way I needed bracing up.

"Maybe we should go to the hospital anyway," Shisui said, holding on to my elbow to stop me from either falling on my face or careening right into someone.

"Do we have to? It'll get better," I said, without looking away from my own hand, which was weaving against the equally unsteady backdrop of a quiet Konoha street. This wasn't exactly a lie, but I was definitely pretending to be more confident about it than I actually felt. It... might get better.

"I know you hate the hospital," Shisui said patiently, even though I was pretty sure he did _not_ know this about me. He let me relax against the wall nearest us. If I put my back to it, I could be assured of the proper vertical axis here. What a nice wall. I patted it gently, and missed. "But you can't walk."

It wasn't any worse than being drunk. "Let me try sleeping it off. If it doesn't improve on its own, we can try the hospital then." I wasn't going to add that the doctors at the hospital might be less confident in my diagnosis than our Yamanaka friend. Better to avoid that if I could.

The village itself, when viewed through brief breaks between nausea and dizziness, was pretty much as I might have expected, if visiting fictional villages was something I'd been in the habit of, you know, expecting. The major streets were broad and hard-packed but unpaved, and numerous alleys and back-streets crisscrossed over them. They fell in the shadows of worn and listing multistorey buildings, between which were strung wires in no readily discernible pattern. The buildings had balconies around nearly every window - which seemed weird, until I remembered that they were all probably in use as doors. Even the really high up ones.

"Fine," Shisui agreed. "Can we move again?"

I considered saying 'no' - I felt like saying 'no' - but that seemed unlikely to support my argument against medical intervention. "Yeah."

I pushed off from the wall. So far, so good.

We made our way back to the clan compound, passing stalls and brightly coloured shop fronts alike. There was evidently a small but thriving street food culture here in Konoha, too, from the looks (and smells) of things. And... there was also a huge variety of people who were all armed to the fucking teeth. Some of them didn't _look_ armed, but the ones that did were carrying swords and giant shuriken and pockets and pouches full of knives and needles openly.

I was glad that despite my unsteadiness, and despite that several of these passers by must have noticed it, nobody approached to ask any questions or to offer their help. It seemed clear that all the people we passed on our way considered Shisui perfectly capable of dealing with it.

That seemed like an odd attitude to take about a thirteen year old boy, but I wasn't about to rock that boat.

The stares got harder and sharper once we actually entered the compound. The walls were high, the people were slight and dark-eyed like the both of us, all the sounds were much quieter and the big fan emblem was painted on everything. People paid more attention and seemed at once both more concerned and strangely more hostile.

I was glad to close the door of the house behind me. Immediately I sagged against the genkan wall while I pried my shoes off. It was a complicated and laborious task because I had to try not to keel over sideways while I did it.

Shisui was a lot more graceful. I took his removing the shoes in the first place to indicate he was staying for more than a few minutes.

I considered just sprawling in the entryway and decided it was rude - and, importantly, that it would hardly convince him that I was alright to take care of myself. ...I wasn't completely sure that I _was_ able to take care of myself right now, of course, but I would be a lot happier leaving Shisui with that impression.

I removed myself to the low table in the area adjacent to the kitchen, where clutched its wooden edge and sank to my knees. From there I rolled right onto the floor. Supine seemed like the most neutral position for my stomach and skull right now. The ceiling above, painted a soft off-white, spun gently while I watched. It seemed to revert to its starting position every so often, ready to begin twisting giddily away again.

"Oh, yeah, you're _so_ healthy," muttered Shisui.

Loftily, I ignored him.

Once he was in the house, Shisui made himself at home and it was almost impossible to get rid of him. He was obviously not intending to leave 'Akiko' lone until I could at least walk around without looking sick. And in the meantime, he had a lot of questions.

Most of them were a who's who of 'But do you remember -?' questions, which eventually, I gathered, would work up to him asking about himself.

"Vaguely," I said, when he finally got there after long minutes of edging around. "I know your name, and that we're, uh, cousins," I said, taking a stab in the dark on that one. We seemed to be of the same generation but not siblings. A lot of relationships could be 'cousins'.

"Mm. We share a great grandfather." Second cousins then; close enough. "That's where your family split from the main line," he added.

The main line, huh? So that made Akiko, like, probably second or third cousins, maybe once removed, from the clan head, right? That seemed good and distant, which was ideal for not having too many people pay attention to her...

"Shisui," I said, interrupting something he was saying about the head family. He'd come back to it if it was important. "Do you really think Yamanaka was right?"

There was a short pause. "About what?"

"About - that I'm Akiko." The ceiling was spinning again, or perhaps still. It seemed to get better and worse on a whim. I closed my eyes and relaxed into the mat. It helped. A little.

The diagnosis was bothering me. Not the part where he thought I was confused and harmless, that bit was fine - it was true, and it seemed likely to stop anyone hurting me. I didn't have to lie about anything, which was great, because if I lied I'd have to remember what I'd said, which would be... bad. And I didn't want anyone to think I was a threat, so 'harmless' was ideal. But... I did not think he was right about my life being the product of some traumatic disassociation... thing.

There was no need for me to _make up_ any of the things I thought I knew about Shisui - nothing about his death in a river with his eyes gouged out, for example. It seemed counter-intuitive that an identity created to protect me from grief would make up convoluted stories about the ugly deaths of her loved ones. But what did I know about psychology?

"Who else would you be?" Shisui asked, not quite managing to sound truly neutral about i.

I wondered if Akiko or her deceased parents kept any wine in the house. Maybe they'd have rice wine. That was what everybody in the manga I remembered - which might, apparently, be my actual memories? - had taken. That would be okay. Even cheap rice wine was drinkable.

 _No, Maria, pay attention._

"No idea," I said. Then, in complete contradiction of what I'd just said, I went on: "Maria. My name is Maria."

 _Akiko this, Akiko that._

I cracked my eyes open and rolled my head to look at Shisui. He whirled a little in my dizzy vision but steadied only a few seconds after my skull did. His face wasn't happy but I didn't know him well enough to say what emotion it was actually showing.

"Your name," he said quietly but steadily, "is Uchiha Akiko. And you're very unwell."

I took a deep breath to argue with him - and then I let it out. It seemed to take a very long time. The room was quiet, and only the occasional noise drifting from outside or the creak of the wood shifting around us interrupted the thump of my heart and the soft hush of my breath.

"All right," I said. Maybe that was easier for both of us right now. I didn't want to argue, and I felt like Shisui wasn't going to take any other answer without getting upset.

He looked, perversely, like he was annoyed with my quick capitulation. Or... annoyed with something, at least.

"What kind of name is Maria, anyway," he mumbled, low enough that I could pretend not to hear. Louder, he said, "I need to make a report to the clan head -" a hesitation. "Do you know who I mean?"

"Yeah." I was blank on his name. Sasuke's dad, though. He meant Sasuke's dad. Was I meant to know who Sasuke was? He'd only be, what, five? Four? Ugh. "Itachi's dad? Mikoto's husband?"

Shisui squinted at me. "Yeah. Fugaku. How do you remember Mikoto but not him?"

I made a multisyllabic but wordless noise, intended to convey that I had no idea and wasn't particularly bothered.

"Yeah," Shisui agreed after a second. "I need to tell him. It'll be bad if he finds out in a report from intel."

He made no sound as he got up and I closed my eyes rather than watch him move. The ceiling had slowed in its spinning, at least. A little.

"I'll send someone to check on you," Shisui said. "Don't go anywhere."

"Don't bother." I didn't look at him or even open my eyes. "I'm not going anywhere." How would I even do that right now?

He didn't argue with me, and I just barely heard the door click closed after him a second later. Man, he was quiet.

Of course, not arguing with me directly by no means meant that Shisui was going to let me win the argument we hadn't quite had - I couldn't _stop_ him sending someone to check up on me, so instead of actually soliciting my permission he'd just warned me, ignored my protest, and sent someone anyway.

The first thing I knew about that was the sound of someone's soft, pleasant voice calling Akiko's name.

I opened my eyes slowly. The ceiling did not move, but the light had changed colour. I'd fallen asleep.

"Akiko," said the voice again.

I grunted and sat up, which brought the speaker into view. He could not have been any older than Akiko, but there was a gravity and a seriousness to his face and expression that you didn't usually see in a preteen - or much before thirty, actually.

He looked a little like Shisui and a little like Akiko - slight, with long flexible limbs and dark eyes and dark hair and pleasantly symmetrical features. These, as far as I could tell, seemed to be the hallmarks of the Uchiha clan, and were stamped on everyone I'd yet seen in the compound.

He was young. I didn't like children, as a rule, but he was a cute kid.

He tilted his head a fraction. "Shisui said you'd remembered me," he said cautiously. He didn't come any closer than where he stood, across the other side of the low wooden table.

I frowned. Who had I said I ... Oh. Oh! "Itachi, right?"

He was the only person I could recall mentioning who was in this age group.

"Yes," he agreed, although it was hard to say whether he was relieved or not by me getting it right. Slowly he sat down where he was. "Are you feeling any better, Akiko?"

I leaned my elbow on the table and watched him curiously. He was almost impossible for me to read. "I'm not as dizzy," I said, and he nodded as though this entirely satisfied his question.

"That's an improvement. What..." He paused. He was young to have such a hard expression, but he looked even younger when the line of his mouth softened. "You'll be asked often what you remember," he said. I figured he was trying to skirt politely around actually asking.

"That's okay," I said flippantly, "It's a question with a short answer."

Itachi's face didn't change. "Aa. That's a shame," he said, quiet and placid.

"Right." I squinted at him.

We remained in awkward silence for another few minutes, but then my manners (these were small, shrivelled things, which did not always trouble me when they should) woke up and reminded me to make tea. So I got slowly to my feet and went looking for a kettle.

I was still a little dizzy, my stomach a little delicate with any sudden or uncontrolled movements, but I was not suffering like I had been.

I left Itachi serenely sitting at the low table, just within my sight line from the kitchen. He had taken to paging through the photos and mementos I'd left scattered on its surface before Shisui had whisked me off. Neither of us had bothered to put them away yet.

From Itachi's face he may just as well have been watching grass grow - and not nice, healthy, fertilised and watered grass, either. Slow, sickly grass. Glacial grass growth.

The tea I dug out smelled like good tea and came in a fancy jar, so it was probably something intended for guests. That was all right - I felt like a guest, Itachi was technically a guest, and there was nobody here to greet either of us in this utterly unfamiliar kitchen. Rude, that. I helped myself to the inhabitants' hospitality.

"Thank you," Itachi said, when I poured it. He watched avidly, as I poured my own too - there was a moment of anxiety there when the room moved around me without my permission, but it mostly ended up in my cup - and he sipped once, delicately and deliberately, in what I assumed was a show of politeness.

I sipped. I was right, it was nice tea.

Itachi tilted his head, also deliberately, and then just as I'd opened my mouth to ask if he was hearing something I couldn't catch, Shisui clattered back through the door and called out: "The elders want to see Akiko!" and then -

Well, apparently when the Uchiha clan elders wanted something, they got it.

We went to them and Shisui made approving noises about my improved balance along the way:

"You fixed her!" he said, as I looked around curiously, noticing that the clan had really taken their emblem and run with it as a design feature. They were really everywhere.

"She slept, Shisui-nii," said Itachi scrupulously, as though Shisui may not have been joking. I glanced at them, but their faces were ciphers. I didn't know either of them well enough to see if there was some well hidden humour in there.

The elders were old. This was not, I guessed, unexpected, but I felt like I hadn't been completely prepared to suddenly be faced with so many people over seventy.

I did not recognise a single one of them, which did not surprise me. I was a little confused about whether I was Akiko - as they all said - or Maria - as I remembered, but in either case, the clan elders were not really a big part of the story I remembered, and I didn't feel or recall anything when I looked into their aged faces.

We met them in a hall, where all of them could be seated with what attendants and accommodations they required, and I stood in the centre of this rough circle of dark, sharp eyes in wrinkled faces. They were all so clearly related that they shared many features and it was in some cases difficult for a stranger like me to even tell them apart.

Behind the frailest, at the had of the hall, was a fire, and above that a huge Uchiwa painted upon a cracked wall. Lanterns and fire were the chief sources of light - and before those was that sea of eerily similar faces, dark-eyed and grim, in a parade of dark yukata like a uniform.

Itachi melted immediately into the background, or maybe just into the shadows between the bent bodies of the clan elders. In either case, I couldn't spot him. Shisui waited and then seemed to decide to remain hovering at my back .

"Bow," he hissed, while the fire crackled and they all stared at me in silence.

"What?" I started.

 _"Bow."_ This time he put s hand between my shoulder blades and pushed, so I would either bow when he did or stumble. I bowed.

None of the elders bowed back. And for a long time, none of them even said anything. I stood and watched them and they sat and watched me. After what felt like a whole minute I raised my eyebrows and looked sideways at Shisui, who - just kept standing still, awaiting acknowledgement.

Oookay, then.

I took my cue from him and waited, but I was internally passing judgment something fierce. If this was Akiko's family, it really explained why 'severe reaction to traumatic events' was the first diagnosis anyone came to. Some problems didn't have to be literally genetic to be inherited, if you took my meaning.

Finally, one of the elders said, "Explain why _this_ was not brought to our attention sooner."

It felt ambiguous who they were talking to. I glanced at Shisui, then frowned and pointed to my chest. Was _I_ supposed to explain this?

He shook his had, once, and then opened his mouth: "As a matter potentially affecting village security, it was decided that it should be brought to intel."

That was telling, I thought, growing only tenser to hear that 'it was decided'; passive voice usually meant someone was dodging responsibility. Had Shisui done something he oughtn't have?

Another spoke up. "It was a mater foremost affecting security in the clan compound - that was where the breach took place, was it not?"

"Honoured elder," Shisui said delicately, "please let me remind you that no such breach in security existed. There was no breach. Merely a-" he looked at me sideways with an unreadable expression, "-health problem."

"Sophistry," barked the elder in question, in a voice as harsh as the call of a crow. "Our procedures for security in the event of a breach were tested - that there was, allegedly, no breach of security does not make a difference to that."

'Allegedly' was such a hostile word. I shifted on my feet uncomfortably.

"I do not think it wise to openly question Yamanaka-san's work," murmured an ancient woman. Her iron grey hair was pulled into a very tight bun and her dark eyes seemed incredibly glazed. But her voice was lucid and clear. "Neither is it correct to say our security has been tested - say, rather," her eyes sharpened on Shisui, "that they _should_ have been tested, had they not been disregarded completely."

There was a long silence.

"Well, Shisui?" asked a voice that had not yet spoken. This, I saw when I looked, was a grim-faced man who seemed by no means old enough to actually be considered 'an elder'. He couldn't have been forty, even, and may not have been much older than me. I mean - _me_ , me, Maria-me, not... Well. Akiko was ten. Unless Akiko was real and Maria was a lie. I shook that thought away with a twitch of my head, which drew eyes. I stilled. The mixed gazes of the assembled elders remained and held. I did not shudder - just.

"If a breach had occurred - which it did not-" Shisui reminded everybody cautiously, to a chorus of shifting clothes that broadcast the elders' collective impatience with him, "-it may not have been the only such event in the village. Because it indicated a potential breach in village security, and because a quick reporting interval is the single-most important factor in -"

There was a sudden wave of noise, voices raised in argument, all strident and none clear. Several of the elders shot to their feet, hands raised and voices croaking with strain.

"-the most important," Shisui raised his voice even higher, "-okay, all right, but _very important as a factor_ \- Because it is _**a**_ very important factor it was decided that village security took the primacy -" more yelling, greater cacophony, "- and my report was made as soon as that obligation was met.

"However -"

Shisui sighed and waited for the talking to subside this time. I heard someone complain that she didn't know what they were teaching young ninja in the academy these days, and another man scoffed that enemy numbers were _always_ the most important factor, and therefore intelligence was more important...

"However," he tried again, "by that time we knew that there had been no breach. I saw no need to follow clan security procedure for what was not a breach of security-"

This time, the voices rose like a wave and crashed over us. Now I was picking up actual phrases out of the reedy, creaky din of combined angry Uchihas: '- _member of_ _ **this clan**_ _or not?_ ' somebody demanded, and over that, at a piercing pitch, '- _flouting the authority of_ -' and '- _think hard about where your loyalty lies, boy-_!'

"Enough!" yelled that one incongruously young 'elder'. His voice cut in a throaty roar right through the weaker ones of the older people present. " _Enough!_ "

There was silence. It rang around us, once the voices stopped echoing off the walls. The fires crackled.

"Fugaku-sama," said a man, tightly, into the quiet.

"Enough," Fugaku repeated more quietly. "Shisui, you will review clan security protocols and submit with your report a self assessment explaining how you will in future better deal with such a situation, should it arise. Since there has been no true breach," he ordered, now addressing the elders more generally, and he had to raise his voice a little to be heard over the cantankerous grumbling of those unready to let it drop, "we will not require any punishment. Shisui, you are dismissed."

He lifted one hand to gesture toward the door.

"Yessir," said Shisui, and bolted.

That left me alone in the circle of their grey heads, the natural point at which all their gazes converged. Most of them were looking toward Fugaku, but it was only a matter of time. Already I could feel their attention more keenly.

So much for my loving elder cousin, I guessed. ...Still. I could hardly blame him.

There was a low collective murmur and it seemed that at least one of the clan council decided to move on, because she straightened from her hunched posture and asked: "Do you believe that there has been no breach?"

Suddenly all eyes were truly on me. I froze.

Some prehistoric instinct kept me still even as my pulse skyrocketed. Their eyes were red and wheeling and burning. Every one of them was alight with some terrible inner glow and they all settled upon me with the weight of an unsubtle threat.

"We have," said one of the elders slowly, "no reason to doubt Yamanaka's assessment."

I wondered what their eyes could see. And then, unhappily, I thought to wonder what their eyes _couldn't_ see, instead.

One of the others made alow and derisive noise, thick in his throat. "We have no reason to doubt his ability," he corrected. There were hums of agreement, and a lesser number of scoffing noises.

"Say, rather, that we know there is no breach in security by those enemies _outside_ the village."

This, a great many more people seemed to agree with. Here and there, red eyes began to flicker back to dark again, but they were few and even that did not make me feel any safer. What were they doing to do if they decided I was some kind of - er, of 'breach' (by which they so clearly meant 'spy')?

"Shisui's report," began one person.

"Shisui is young, and it is clear that his judgment may only be trusted so far," another interrupted drily.

"Akiko," barked Fugaku.

I jolted and blinked. I had become used to being the topic under discussion but not a person to address - and the name threw me. "Uh... yeah?" I said belatedly.

"What do you say for yourself?"

I frowned at him, and I kind of wanted to ask for clarification. What did I say about ... _what_? Was I supposed to tell him that I didn't think I was a security problem? I wasn't sure if asking would be a good idea.

I licked my teeth. "I don't... really know anything about, er, being Akiko. I woke up with a hangover this morning and it turns out I'm supposed to be someone else. Apparently. I'm confused. I'm not enjoying being 'Akiko'," I made air quotes without even thinking about it, "and I want to go home."

"What is your name?" someone asked then.

"Maria," I said, and somewhere deeper in the room I heard someone pointedly wonder if this was even a real name. Several people clicked their tongues chidingly.

"Your name is Akiko," said Fugaku severely and, wow, I guessed that he and Shisui really were related after all.

I breathed out.

"What is - where do you believe you come from, if not here? Who are your family? Your specialty?" He sounded more and more annoyed with every question and I hadn't even started to answer them yet.

Slowly, though, I did answer. I described my home city in excruciating detail, from the traffic conditions to the population to the overpriced coffee and lagging public transport system. I mentioned my own extremely abbreviated family - one sibling, far away, and the rest all dead, thanks for asking - and then I kind of stalled.

"I don't know what you mean by a specialty. Do you mean, like, my profession?" I hoped he didn't mean that he wanted me to name something I was good at. The list was short, and maybe not very flattering. "I do administrative work. I'm a clerk."

Someone snorted, and I followed the sound with my eyes, looking for its source. Hey, I hadn't said it was _glamorous_ , but bills had to be paid. (Eventually. Bills had to be paid... eventually.)

"I am beginning to agree with Yamanaka," one old woman declared scathingly. "These are the delusions of a child."

There was a murmured hum of argument with this - they had all watched me with their unholy red eyes for any indication of falsehood, and although they could find none, they nevertheless found my report too fantastical to countenance.

I bit my lip. They would not accept the idea of vehicular traffic, the could not accept that I might not be a ninja, they found my report of life outside a hidden village laughably unrealistic...

"Akiko... If such a city, with such a population, had ever existed," sighed one of them, condescending and weary, "I think we may have discovered it by now."

This was roughly when I realised that I was standing in the middle of this circle of judgemental old crones - and that I was, from their perspective, _trying to convince them of my otherkin identity_.

Little wonder, I thought distantly, that this was going so badly.

I promptly gave up.

"I guess... If you think so," I said slowly. Someone must have seen from my body language that I was lying, because they made a frustrated noise.

"Yamanaka is correct," someone else decided. "She is - sick."

This was accepted, after a moment, as being generally true. The consensus stuck.

"The personal medical problems of clan members are not a matter for the council of elders," a man said, crossly, as though I'd crafted this nefarious plan personally just to waste his time. "You are dismissed."

I felt something in my eyelid start to tick maddeningly. Fugaku grunted and gestured to the door, and then -

I didn't know what I was going to do next or even, in the shortest term, exactly where Akiko's house was from here - but I was not about to hang around this crowd just to ask for directions.

I could hear their tutting and feel their heavy, burning eyes on me as I turned. I left through the exit indicated and I did not look back.

* * *

And I am ending this chapter here, because otherwise it will be in excess of five thousand words and having chapter lengths that unequal will give me hives. maybe literally. best not to chance it :|

If there was something you especially liked about this work or chapter, feel free to let me know if that is something you would like to do. Otherwise have a good night.


	3. Chapter 3

The air outside was cooling down as the sun set, and I became suddenly aware of how stifling that room had truly been. Maybe really old people needed it to be warmer? Was that a thing? It wasn't a thing I'd ever experienced personally, but I wasn't that old...

Or maybe all those fires had truly only been for that Authentic Uchiha Ambience. Either way, I was glad to be out in the cool evening air again.

The compound hadn't changed at all - it was still unfamiliar, still clean and neat, muted except for the large red and white emblems on what seemed like every single wall. Even if there had been someone from whom I was willing to request directions, I seemed to be... pretty much alone.

Hmm. Had we come from this direction? I thought we had. I turned left and began walking. It didn't look familiar, but then, nothing looked familiar. The compound couldn't be that big though. I'd recognise Akiko's house.

...Wouldn't I?

Surely.

"That could have gone worse," said Shisui cheerfully, from right behind me.

I jolted and squeaked. "Oh my god. Oh my _god_. Where did you come from?"

He gave me a long, blank look. "I was... waiting for you?"

It took me a second. Right. Ninja. Sneaky. I guessed after a while that must be, like, a lifestyle that was hard to switch off.

"I was right next to the door," he said, smiling. "You walked right past me."

No, I hadn't.

I definitely hadn't.

...Had I?

Christ. "Um, okay. Do you know where Ak- uh, my house, is?"

He pointed past me, right in the exact opposite direction to the one I'd been walking in. I frowned. "...Are you sure?"

"... _Pretty sure_ ," he said, pointedly, and okay, I guessed he did live here, "yes."

We went silently back toward Akiko's neat little house.

Shisui was nice enough not to say 'I told you so' when it turned out to be in exactly the spot he had said it would be. This really just further cemented for me that he was an uncommonly nice sort of person, because I could not for the life of me imagine having been kind enough to pass up the opportunity for pettiness at his age. I wasn't even that kind as an adult.

We headed inside and kicked off our shoes. "Are you just going to be writing that report?"

"Probably," Shisui agreed, wrinkling up his nose like he wasn't thrilled with the prospect. I couldn't blame him.

"And nobody's going to need me for anything before morning?" I pressed.

"I don't... think so?" Shisui said warily.

"Fine. Make yourself at home, etcetera," I headed into the kitchen and began hunting around through all the cupboards and cabinets. There _must_ have been some wine in here somewhere.

There was no wine, rice or otherwise, but at length I did excavate a bottle of shochu from the dark bottom of a pantry, behind a dustpan. The bottle was dark glass and old and dusty, but it was still sealed and decorated with a ribbon around the neck - a gift, I guessed.

I cracked it open and took a gulp from the bottle, then waited for the taste to hit me. It tasted like it would have been better refrigerated but it was drinkable and I could taste the alcohol, so that was a win as far as I was concerned.

I resolved to go slow in case there was something wrong with it, but a bottle of shochu was a good find. More punch than rice wine, anyway.

I leaned back against wall and sighed. It had... been that kind of day.

"Akiko, what are you looking for?" Shisui called. I wasn't sure if he wanted to help or if he was just procrastinating against having to finish his report. "Maybe I'll know where it is."

"Wine," I called back, trying to sound like a casual person who said things casually, and not like someone who wanted to be drunk three hours ago, "and it's fine, I found it."

Something clicked in the other room, and then when I opened my eyes again, Shisui was right there, frowning at me. He had to have moved very fast indeed to cross that distance in so short a time. And now he was uncomfortably close.

Also, he had my bottle.

I blinked at my empty hand. "Hey!"

"Akiko, you are _ten_ ," he said, in a tone of burgeoning despair.

I scrambled after the bottle and he held it out of reach, effortlessly using both the cramped quarters and the kitchen and his height advantage against me. "I don't know what you're thinking about right now - I haven't known what you've been thinking about all day - but you're confused, and you're very sick, and also kids shouldn't drink alcohol anyway-"

A snarl built in my chest and emerged in a sudden lightning strike of temper - the sudden discharge of something that had undoubtedly been building for hours.

"I am _thirty eight_ and _my whole life is over_ , you tiny little shit," I raged, swiping for him futilely, "give me the fucking bottle!"

" _Akiko_!" he yelped, less distressed by my efforts to pry it out of his stupid ninja hands than he was by my language while trying it.

I snatched at him and came up holding an empty cup, blinking at the sudden teleportation of my 'cousin' into the other room. "Shisui!" I snarled.

By the time I made it out there the bottle had disappeared entirely and Shisui was standing over his discarded report, giving me an expression of mixed irritation and concern.

I took a deep breath. Goddamn ninja.

I could see that bottle was not going to re-emerge. "Look," I said, in as reasonable a tone as possible, given that I was teetering on a knife-edge between screaming seething frustration and... something that was also, admittedly, frustration, but with a lot more crying, "I have had a very long, very weird day, and a lot of new things to adjust to. If I want to get a little drunk and go to bed, I don't think that's a lot to ask."

Shisui's face did something complicated. "Akiko," he began.

"Stop _calling_ me that!" I snapped. I was already thinking of ways to get him to leave, but I doubted any of them would actually be successful.

"It's your name," he said levelly.

I breathed out, hard, from between my teeth.

"Perhaps that wouldn't be too much to ask, or at least it would be more normal, if you _were_ forty -"

"Thirty eight!" Christ, forty would happen on its own. There was no call to _exaggerate_.

"-whatever," Shisui shrugged, like it made no difference (a point on which he was _wrong_ ). "The point is that you're not supposed to recreationally poison yourself before you graduate _or_ while you're sick."

I stared at him. Neither of those categories applied to me - I had long since graduated (from a real damn school, thank you), and I was definitely an adult.

There were several things I wanted to say in response to him, most of them quite rude. I chose, with great effort, not to say any of them. There was no way I could win this one. He was stronger and sneakier. And, frankly, there came a point when you were arguing about whether or not you should be allowed to be drunk at which you started to look a bit desperate, and the appearance of desperation had to be avoided at all costs.

"I see," I said. Then, mildly, I added: "Fine. That's fine. That makes sense."

Shuisui looked like he did not trust my easy capitulation. I wouldn't have, either.

But I could live sober if I had to. True, I wasn't sure if I could live sober _like this_ , in some wild fictional _ninja land_ , but... all things passed eventually. Including this. Somehow.

I took a deep breath and went to make another pot of tea instead. I didn't even lose my temper with Shisui when he trailed along behind me suspiciously.

Look. It wasn't that sobriety was _inherently_ terrible or anything - just that I'd have preferred to spend the night after a day like the one I'd just had pleasantly, you know, insulated from reality. It was evidently not going to happen though, and I felt my mood turn sour and sulky almost like a physical sensation, washed down into my chest and belly with the warm rush of my tea.

I wandered around the house feeling restless and out of sorts, picking things up and putting them down again. Nothing triggered any kind of memory. I didn't even know what to think about the tiny shrine in one corner of the central room and I avoided it conspicuously. I was pretty sure that was a shrine to the dead, none of whom I knew or remembered.

Shisui watched me. It might have been because my restless wandering was distracting him, but I uncharitably thought he was also just keeping an eye on me. I probably wasn't making a great showing of seeming well adjusted to him right then.

At length I flopped down to the floor near him again.

"So what I am I supposed to do now?"

It was pretty pathetic that I was asking for guidance from a strange child instead of using my brain like a damn adult. I heaved a sigh.

"Uh," said Shisui, pausing with the tip of his pen hovering just above the page. "Well. Go to school? Finally graduate the academy?" He frowned at me.

I realised, quite suddenly, all at once, what he meant.

I blinked. I sat up fast - maybe too fast. The room was still weaving a little. "You want _me_ to be a ninja?" I squawked.

"What... else did you..." He frowned even harder, and then took a deep breath, "Akiko," he said slowly, and I ground my teeth, "You've been in the academy for years. You've never wanted to be anything but a ninja. What else are you going to do? Go be a fish-monger?"

I stared back at him. His eyes were dark now, no scary sharingan whirling in them, but they felt no less sharp.

"No," I said slowly, "I don't want to be a fish-monger." And I really didn't. I did not enjoy the smell of fish markets, and I seemed to remember seeing the people working in them wearing really huge, uncomfortable-looking rubber boots. I felt tired just thinking about it.

But I was definitely not ready to become a ninja, that was for sure. There had to be professions between 'fish-monger' and 'state-sanctioned mercenary'. Surely. Surely?

"I do, like, administrative work," I said to Shisui, feeling out his responses. I clearly recalled that one elder who'd said my boring clerical job seemed like 'the delusions of a child'. Nobody had argued with her.

"Is that all?" he said, sounding relieved. "Well, the police and the tower are always looking for ninja to do paperwork. They need the clearance of ninja, but nobody ever wants to do it - mostly they reel in ninja who are old or injured. It's not, uh," he paused, " _prestigious_ ," he said carefully, "but if you want that kind of work there's plenty of ways a ninja can do that."

"...Right," I said slowly. But, of course, it wasn't 'right', because all of those jobs sounded like they required one to _be a ninja_ first.

"You had me worried there!" Shisui admitted with a soft laugh. And then he went right back to his report, evidently in the belief that my concerns had been addressed.

They had... not.

Shisui and I seemed to be approaching this topic from such opposed cultural positions that we weren't even having the same conversation.

I did not have a secret love of filing and processing. But I knew how to do those things, and people always needed them done, and I did have a not-very-secret unwillingness to be a ninja. And I sure did not want to go through what I was pretty sure was the normal ninja career progression - a three-genin team and a lot of dangerous and physically demanding work.

"Is that something I could ask the teachers at the academy about?" Maybe they'd be less hostile to the idea of alternatives - Shisui, after all, was from a big clan with some very fixed ideas (and very fixed elders, who considered _admin work_ a quaint delusion).

He looked bemused. "Sure. I mean, they're teachers. Most of them would have done that kind of work too, probably."

I nodded and decided not to bring it up with members of the clan again until I knew more.

This was how I found myself attending classes at the academy the following morning. It went like this: I was herded, through all my complaints, in the early morning air by a very patient Shisui. He demanded that I memorise the way, since nobody would accept 'I got lost' as an excuse for truancy. On our way we passed through the market again, and although most stalls and shops were not yet open for business we could see people sweeping and setting up, and after that we crossed the river and passed a temple that looked, in the dawn light, thoroughly abandoned.

The campus had a lot of grounds, sprawling and largely clear of trees around the huddle of little buildings that formed the classrooms and offices. The boundaries were poorly defined.

There were kids everywhere - not even teenagers like Shisui, but actual children - running and yelling and exhibiting that singular talent of children everywhere to be as damp and sticky as possible. I baulked as soon as we came within truly ear-piercing range of the shrieking.

"They're so _loud_ ," I said, giving Shisui wide and panicked eyes.

He flashed me a benevolent smile, planted one hand between my shoulder blades and propelled me gently forward.

"You'll be fine," he said, proving that, despite his sweet face, he was absolutely heartless. "Go find Suzume-sensei."

My teacher turned out to be a voluptuously curvy lady with a tumbling fall of chestnut hair and an eyebrow that, when raised, communicated the vast degree to which she was preemptively done with my shit.

"I've been notified of your 'circumstances'," she told me once I'd wandered to her classroom through the surreal backdrop screaming prepubescent mania outside.

It wasn't as though sensei actually gestured out her scare quotes, but I could certainly hear them. She tapped her pen on the top of her desk - the only full sized one in a room full of undersize furniture and worn posters and dust motes -and peered at me with her sleepy, heavy-lidded eye. "I expect it won't impact your performance."

Um, what?

"That expectation," I said slowly, "sounds a little..."

Her tapping stopped abruptly, and I felt as though a cloud had drifted between me and the sun. Outside the children were still howling like a cyclone wind, but inside the classroom it was very, very quiet.

I shifted uneasily beneath the weight of the teacher's suddenly-hostile attention and allowed myself to trail off. It didn't matter enough to get into an argument about it. My 'performance' would be poor. There was nothing I could do about it.

And, really, it wasn't something I had to care about because I was going to drop out and shame every single member of the Uchiha clan at the earliest opportunity. Even the dead clan members would be shamed. Even Madara all wrinkled up in his mountain hidey hole was going to feel it, probably. I just had to figure out if a ten year old had that right, and if so how to exercise it. If not... well, I could take the long way and fail, I guessed.

"There," murmured my teacher, curving her painted lips into an insincere little smile. "You're learning already."

Right. Well.

I chose not to answer.

The Academy turned out not to be an institution that had much interest in pastoral care.

I did not recognise a single face in the classroom, which... seemed odd. I felt as though I should know at least some of the other students by sight - I should have some recognition, looking at them. I recognised that one of them was from the Aburame clan because of her oversized clothes and dark glasses, but otherwise this classroom was just a bunch of nine to eleven year olds looking small, sticky, loud and unrealistically leggy. I did not feel good about this.

Two of the kids said hello and I gave them fixed smiles and waved awkwardly. And then I dove for a seat across the other side of the classroom, as far from them as I could get.

Class stopped being loud about zero-point-two seconds after sensei stood up, which convinced me better than anything else could have that she was a figure of terror to these kids. She smiled benevolently with her painted mouth. "Let's see who did their homework, shall we? Akiko," she went on, turning her smile on me, "what are the seals we use for the replacement technique?"

I had... not the foggiest clue. "I don't know, sensei," I said. I didn't feel bad about admitting it, since as far as I was concerned there was no way I could have known this given the circumstances. Perhaps if I'd checked Akiko's work before class? But my schedule had been kind of full yesterday - mostly of confusion and panicking - and it hadn't even occurred to me this morning.

It seemed like this was a funny or audacious answer, however, because a minority of the class broke out into low snickers, and sensei's mouth compressed. The girl sitting next to me coughed quietly.

"Not even going to try?" sensei asked sweetly. "Not even going to guess?"

I did not even know which signs were _possible_. I shook my head. "No?"

Her eyes narrowed. "Chorin," she said instead, without taking her eyes off me, "what are the seals, in sequence?"

A girl, who must have been 'Chorin', rattled off a list of signs - all zodiac animals - while showing us the motions with her fingers.

I was not sure I could even replicate all of them, let alone in sequence.

I shifted uncomfortably in my small, preteen-sized seat. Not an auspicious start.

During that first class I answered 'I don't know, sorry,' to four questions, caused a great deal of laughter among the other (sticky) children, and grew to appreciate the peace and quiet offered by the grand tradition of punishment laps.

Punishment laps worked like this: every time I got something wrong or acted 'rude' by saying I didn't know the answer instead of making something up, sensei would purse her lips, explain the answer, and assign me five laps around the premises to 'discourage poor study habits in the future'.

Since class was in session, there was almost nobody out there. My body was fit for the exercise, and running was meditative. I wasn't learning a damned thing, but I was away from all the other children and my supervision consisted of whatever teacher happened to be taking a smoke break on the roof.

I didn't know how I'd feel about it if the weather turned, but as it stood: it wasn't that much of a punishment.

Even though he'd been adamant about my memorising the route, Shisui still showed up to walk me home as well at the end of the school day.

"Hi," I said, surprised. "What're you doing here?"

"Ah..." He rubbed the back of his head and smiled. "Well, I figured you might want a friendly face by now."

His hair was a disaster and he slouched with one hand in his pocket. He looked less like a ninja and more like a bored teenager, about three minutes from whipping out a can of spray paint and defacing something. I guessed this look might come naturally to him... and also that it might be the whole point. I had not forgotten how quick he'd been with the shoucho the night previous.

I fell into step beside him, stretching my short legs to keep pace.

"How was it?" he asked.

"I ran a _lot_ of laps," I said serenely. I ignored the way this news made him twitch his shoulder.

"Aa... Akiko, that's not good," he said, looking up at the sky and pointedly not at me. I ignored this, too.

"Did anything interesting happen to you today?" I asked.

Having perfunctorily registered his disapproval of my getting into trouble in school, Shisui accepted my change of subject with grace. "Umm..." he tapped his bottom lip. "Well, I gave my self-assessment to Fugaku-sama, and I ran a courier mission to Tanzaku-Gai? I ate some takoyaki there and saw some friendly dogs."

Riveting. And also, I was pretty certain, a giant lie of omission. If what I remembered was right - it might not be, since I was increasingly confused about reality - Shisui wasn't exactly an _errand boy_. But it wasn't my business, and there might even have been some kind of security issue with telling me too much.

"I _do_ like friendly dogs," I admitted, which at least gave us something to talk about on the walk home. There were a great many friendly dogs in Tanzaku-Gai - apparently.

We went back the same way we'd come that morning, passing through the same packed-dirt streets. The shops were more lively than they had been then, open and colourful. Occasionally, I heard someone hawking their products as we went through.

Over the noisy river and set back from the path, the temple was the same as it had been - it looked pretty much abandoned still, except for a lone monk with a shaven head, peacefully sweeping its steps.

I wondered if the building was used for festivals or something, or if it was just always that empty. You'd think there'd be signs of life in there - more than just one slow-sweeping monk, anyway.

The monk spotted me looking. He blinked slowly, then clasped his hands and bowed his head, so I gave a tentative wave back - probably not as formal as you were meant to be with priests? I didn't know the etiquette. Surely it would have been worse not to respond.

Shisui must have noticed, but he said nothing about it and we continued on the way home without interruption. Come to think of it, I had very little idea about how religion even worked here in the elemental nations. For all I knew, that could have been the local chapter of the Jashinist church.

 _That_ would definitely explain why it was abandoned, at least.

"So," I said at Akiko's yet unfamiliar door, "If I wanted to find out more about laws and customs and stuff, where would I do that?"

"Um," said Shisui. "There are a couple of places. But that sounds really boring," he added, making a face. "Don't you have real homework? It can't be worse that that."

"Not today," I said. It may or may not have been a lie. I was surely running laps when any such work had been assigned to the class, and I certainly had not cared enough to find out about it through my own initiative after. Besides, I'd have had to have another conversation with sensei. That wasn't happening if I could help it.

Shisui did not look like he believed me, but he showed me the dusty building where extremely mundane clan records were kept, as well as a short pile of general reference books and scrolls. If anybody had organised the collection they weren't doing a very good job of it.

"Cool," I said, looking around, and then went looking.

 _The Laws and Customs of Konoha's Founding_ , 3rd Ed, told me that no, ten year olds were not allowed to drop out of the school into which they'd been enrolled. If you didn't graduate on your own, you got to make that choice for yourself at fourteen and no earlier - any earlier and your parents, adult relatives, clan elders or the state (in that order) got to decide for you. On the surface of it, that seemed pretty reasonable, but it meant that I, in the unfortunate position of being Akiko, was not able to drop out of the Academy for another four years. _Four years._

I rubbed my face and swore.

So it was going to be either failure, or expulsion.

I licked my teeth. Failure at or expulsion from _ninja school_ both seemed like they might end up being, er, kind of... punitive. I didn't think I liked the idea of what solutions my sensei and loving family might try out on me before giving up.

But I also _really_ did not want to be stuck in ninja school for another four years.

I wondered, looking uncertainly around the dusty and poorly organised archives, if anyone else had ever convinced the clan to let them off the ninja hook. If there was a precedent, here would be the place to find out about it.


	4. Chapter 4

Well before I ran into a good precedent, Shisui got restless or lonely or something, and he showed back up.

"Akiko, are you still here? Have you eaten? Have you _bathed_?" he added with markedly greater disgust.

I blinked up from a text about marriage customs - which I had thought might reference other conditions of the couples' daily lives, and it did, but so far they were all ninja, ninja, ninja.

If I'd ever had any thoughts about civilian Uchihas they were being proven wrong very aggressively. The only non-ninja Uchihas in the books and scrolls seemed to be a) retired or b) dead. Even those disabled in the course of duty or pregnant or too old, even these classes of people who I had so naively assumed must be setting a precedent somewhere, were desk-ninja, who worked at tasks given according to their security clearance among the military police. If there were true civilians in this stupid clan, they were very carefully hidden from the records.

"Oh," I said, looking up. "Shisui? What are you doing here? Didn't you go a little while ago?" _Can he really not handle an hour without my company?_ I thought crabbily but of course that wasn't why he was so attentive. Akiko was ten and living largely unsupervised and, supposedly, suffering some kind of severe psychiatric problem. I tried to think charitable thoughts.

"Sure, if by 'a little while' you mean three and a half hours," he said, edging around a case piled precariously high with scrolls. He wrinkled his nose at the dust. "What are you even looking for in here?"

There was a short pause as he shuffled closer and I declined to answer, and then his eyes sharpened and his posture shifted. "Actually, what _are_ you looking for, Akiko?" he asked, slower and more intent. "You're not - there's nothing classified in here."

I felt like I could sense, by some intensely physical means, the sheer pressure of his stare. He put that Academy sensei's hostile face to shame without even trying. I felt myself hunch involuntarily.

"I'm not looking for anything classified," I said, keeping my head down and avoiding eye contact even as my heart rate threatened to skyrocket.

Shisui let out a long, unhappy sigh, but the tension bled off like this was the release of it: air, slowly deflating from him with his sigh. "What _are_ you looking for then? Because you're putting me in a hard position - I want you to be safe, but I also have..." he paused. "Responsibilities."

I looked up finally, half aware that to do so was to take a significant risk in meeting his sharingan, which could capture me in all sorts of unpleasant ways. But when I met Shisui's eyes they were dull and dark and safe.

Shisui's responsibilities were pretty heavy for someone who was barely a teenager. "I'm trying to see if there's been anyone in my situation, before, and maybe what happened to them," I said finally, and although it was a lie by implication it was, technically, true. I was talking about 'my circumstances' as someone who didn't want to be a ninja, but Shisui had no context for that, and would presumably assume I meant 'my circumstances' in the whole body-switching-might-actually-be-disassociated-identities ...thing.

He was giving me one of those long, steady looks that said he did not quite believe me, though. "Really," he said.

He was good at telling when I was lying, goddamn him. I chewed my bottom lip. Even just lying by implication didn't keep the nervousness out of my body language, apparently. "Fine. I'm looking for people who didn't finish at the Academy," I snapped.

He sat down on the edge of my table. "Akiko, what - it can't have been _that bad_?"

I made an uncertain noise in my throat.

"You'll catch back up, you know you will. You're in for a few rough days, maybe even a few bad weeks, but -"

"So," I interrupted, and he kindly fell silent, "like, hypothetically, if someone did do _really_ badly at the Academy-"

"Akiko, you're a daughter of the single greatest clan of ninja in the elemental nations," Shisui said slowly. In the split second he paused for breath, I wondered what would happen if I interjected with 'what, you mean the Senju?' Probably nothing good. I tucked the urge away. Shisui was still talking: "You're not going to _fail the Academy_. Nobody fails the Academy."

His voice said he was trying to be comforting, but his face said he wasn't even equipped to contemplate such a silly concern.

"Hypothetically," I insisted. Let him think I as worried about failing. Frankly, I was counting on it as plan B.

He gave me a capital-L Look, but evidently decided to humour me. He leaned back on his hands. His legs swung, kicking the air, and he tipped his head back so he could raise his eyes to the ceiling. "Hypothetically," he said, "I wouldn't... recommend it. "

Ah.

"I don't actually know. But I can't imagine the clan elders would be very impressed."

"Right," I muttered. That had been about what I'd figured - and what I was worried about. "Well, if you don't mind, I'm going to keep looking -"

"Or," Shisui said, grabbing my arm and pulling me to my feet effortlessly, "you could _do your Academy homework_."

He was so much stronger it was unfair. I had to leave the archives. I couldn't stop him from pulling me away.

But I still didn't know anything about any homework, and I wasn't very inclined to try.

I never did find what I was looking for in the archives, even though I went back night after night, after each incredibly unsatisfying day at ninja school. Eventually Shisui seemed to accept that I wasn't going to stop digging around in there, and he rolled his eyes and lamented how boring I was - but he didn't try to stop me.

It didn't matter, in the end: his intervention wouldn't have stopped me learning anything, because it just wasn't there to learn. Nobody was willing to admit that anyone who had been part of the family had ever been anything _but_ a ninja. Logically I knew this to be impossible, but logic did not seem to have had much impact upon the Uchiha archivists.

Even Shisui, when I asked what on earth had happened to all the civilian Uchiha, had looked blankly over at me and said, "You mean like, when people retire?"

Clearly, I was going to have to find an alternative place to get information to facilitate my graceful exit into civilian life.

My relationship with my academy teacher was not what anyone would have called good - but she certainly did not seem to want me in her classroom, so it seemed as though she might be someone I could ask anyway.

I ambled in near the end of class, sweaty from my thrilling punishment laps for the day, one afternoon a couple of weeks after having started back there again. It had taken me at least that long to work myself up to having this discussion. I remained behind after all the other students had left to talk, noting that the classroom was eerily silent once all the loud messy children had left it. I still felt my ears subtly ringing from the pitch of their voices.

"I'm not going to give you an extension on your homework," Suzume-sensei said flatly to me. She did not look up from the paper on her desk.

That was cool by me, since I had absolutely no intention of submitting any homework, either on time or later.

"That's fine," I said, leaning back against one of the short student desks. It seemed weird that I fit into furniture made in itty-bitty size for preteens, but that was the state of things. "I actually wanted to ask about if there are, like, acceptable alternatives to being a ninja that I can pursue, and if there are, how I can do that."

Suzume-sensei looked up and stared at me for so long, and so silently, and so still, that I began to wonder if there was some kind of illusory technique in play.

Then the pen in her hand snapped right down the middle with a hard _crack_ of stressed plastic. She hurled the bottom end at me. Ink spattered across the desk and the floor. I jerked out of the way and it struck my shoulder instead of my face, a sharp impact I felt even through my clothes.

"Ow!"

"I," said sensei in a voice thick with rage, clenching her inky fingers into a fist that shook, "am not going to be the teacher responsible for an Uchiha dropping out of the Konoha ninja academy! Are you trying to make me a laughingstock?"

I twitched. "No? I didn't realise that was a career thing for you. How was I meant to know that?" I rubbed my shoulder. It ached and there was no way the ink was coming out of this shirt.

"But you don't have to throw things at me," I added, and almost rolled my own eyes at how plaintive and childish I sounded. I blew out a breath. I felt a little desperate. "Come on, surely not _everyone_ wants to be a ninja?" Frankly it was astonishing to me that _anyone_ did.

Sensei was absolutely not swayed by my wheedling. "If they don't, they have the good sense to keep their mouths shut about it!" she snapped. She looked at the other end of the pen, the pointed end, now leaking onto her desk. I took a step back. That one would hurt if she used it as a ballistic weapon.

But she shut her eyes, unclenched her hands and took two deep breaths, in through her nose, out through her mouth.

"All right," she said, standing up. Her heels made a soft click on the wooden floors. She leaned the swell of her hip back against the lip of her desk casually, but her hands gripped its edge tightly. "Akiko," she said, with a synthetic smile. She blinked rapidly. "I don't know what's gotten into you. You used to be n above average student and now suddenly you can't be bothered to answer the simplest questions in class -"

"I don't remember anything Akiko knew," I interrupted. She'd said she'd been briefed, but she sure didn't sound like it.

"Do not interrupt me," sensei said, with a placid smile and a hard edge to her voice. Evidently the effect of her breathing exercises had its limitations. She leaned in closer, close enough for me to see the patterns of darker brown in her iris. "I've been briefed on your little 'psychological condition', yes, but that's not an excuse for your laziness, which is how you're trying to use it. And that's what this nonsense is about, really isn't it? Class has become too hard for you, and you think you can use this to get out of it."

Her pretty face was much closer to mine than I felt comfortable with. "You don't want to drop out, Akiko. You just want it to be _easy_ so you can be _lazy_. So you don't have to work hard. Well, I have some news for you, young lady!" I could feel her warm breath on my face now and I leaned back. "Life is hard! Life. Is. Hard. And sometimes in life you have to do things you _don't want to do._ " She finished on a snarl, voice ragged, teeth bared, eyes gleaming.

Suzume-sensei drew back, finally, and breathed out a deep long breath again, until her shoulders dropped and her hands loosened at her sides.

She pulled her hands through her wealth of dark hair, drawing it back from her face, and let it fall again, spilling thick and woolen around her neck.

"Um," I said, in response to this extraordinary speech. I hadn't been on the receiving end of an impassioned lecture like that since I was about fourteen. I did not know what to say to her, so I just backed away a step at a time, and then turned to the classroom door. _Expeditious retreat, go, go, go!_

A split-second later, the second half of sensei's pen hit me in the back of the same shoulder. I yelped. I'd been right, that _did_ bloody hurt.

"If your homework isn't done, Akiko," she said, "I will make you run until you throw up."

I glanced back over my shoulder. She wasn't looking at me at all, but her hand was extended. Her eyes were closed, her body relaxed and leaning against the edge of her desk. Her chest rose and fell too fast to be at rest.

I left and shut the classroom door after me.

Well. That had gone... poorly.

I walked home slowly, rubbing my shoulder and contemplating. Sensei was not what you'd call sympathetic, even though she very clearly would have preferred that I be someone else's problem. It seemed like she'd been charged with teaching the scion of a founding clan as some kind of serious responsibility, and she could neither fail nor ask for help without, as she put it, becoming a laughingstock. That wasn't very helpful.

There was a lone monk sweeping the steps outside the temple again today. I had not yet seen even one other person attending the temple here, but that guy was out there every day, clearing the broad wooden steps. Dedicated.

I went back to Akiko's strange little house in the stifling Uchiha compound, trying to ignore the way the big fans stared down at me from every surface. I avoided doing much of anything once I was there. Shisui wasn't here - he was working, I assumed. I saw Itachi leaping between rooftops briefly, and raised my hand. He returned the greeting with a little nod of his head. He looked very serious, which was completely adorable on someone as tiny as he was.

I dug half heartedly through the archives and did not bother making dinner - it seemed like too much effort.

I thought about doing the homework sensei had set, but I had very little clear idea what it actually was. Some key words about chakra focus stuck out, but I hadn't exactly written it out, and since I spent most of each class period doing punishment laps, I wasn't sure what we were meant to be doing in class, either.

She couldn't really make a student run until they vomited, obviously. People did not put up with teachers doing stuff like that to their children. Even if they did, I'd stop before I got that sick, and then what was she going to do?

Of course, in the morning I discovered that I was absolutely incorrect.

Sensei asked after my homework, smiled her mean painted smile, and then took the whole class outside to the field.

"Pay attention," she said in her sweet, melodious voice, shaking her hair back from her face. The class, despite being comprised of unruly preteen ninja, shut up and paid attention because they were rightly terrified of her. "Uchiha Akiko has decided she's above submitting her work, and has earned a punishment."

And then she told me to run laps, as she had so many days in a row. I began running, one foot in front of another, until I settled into a pace that I could keep up. My lungs moved, my ribs expanded - it was running, it wasn't very exciting.

"Faster," she called, and I glanced at her and put on a little extra speed.

Something whistled, loud and sharp, and a line of fire burnt down the back of my leg. I yelped and stumbled.

I glanced back and on the grass glinted a kunai, with a thin line of blood on its edge. She was throwing fucking _knives_ at me.

"I said _faster_!" yelled sensei. In full voice, she could have been heard clear across a parade ground.

Another sharp bite to the back of my leg. I made a pained grunt, low in my throat, and ran faster.

One of the students let out a bark of surprised laughter. Several others followed, tittering in shock and schadenfreude.

I felt my face flush, higher and hotter than a little jogging could account for. My heart beat faster.

Every time I flagged, gasping for breath, sensei hurled another weapon at me with pinpoint precision to score a burning line down the back of one or both of my legs. And as I ran, the cuts flexed and bled, and my sweat dripped into them and stung.

I ran until my muscles burned and my heart raced unevenly in my chest. And still sensei twirled a knife in her fingers, called, "Faster!" in a clear ringing voice, and then another hot slice scored down my thigh or my calf.

And, yeah. Eventually I did double over and throw up all the wet bile and acid left in my stomach, to the disgust and amusement of the rest of the class.

That was when, finally, sensei put her knife away and sauntered over to me. I was too dizzy to pay much attention to her approach, and still coughing up fluids when she finally came to a stop.

"Don't you think doing your assigned work would be easier than this?" she asked, bored and drawling.

"I'm sure it would be," I said breathlessly. I was dehydrated and bleeding. It wasn't good for my blood pressure, and I felt like stress was the only thing keeping me upright. I might be sick again in very short order.

"Very good," she said, like she was praising an obedient dog. I gave her a murderous glare to absolutely no effect. My chest heaved. "Perhaps you will do your homework now," she suggested.

I was silent. She smiled kindly. "You're dismissed. Go get some water, Akiko."

I limped away, ignoring the stares and the murmurs of the other members of the class.

I wasn't stubborn enough to risk this happening again. I wished I _was_. But my pride didn't hold out that far.

I hated her. I resented her. Every fibre of my being despised Suzume-sensei and her fake little smiles and her brittle, cold personality.

And, bitterly, when she announced the assignment that night, you can be sure I wrote it down.

* * *

If you liked something about this story in particular, and you're inclined to comment, feel free to let me know! Otherwise have a good night ;)


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